Metal containing conjugated polymers-applications and photophysical properties

Abstract

We have designed a series of multifunctional metal containing conjugated polymers in which the transition metal complex moieties were incorporated to the polymer main chain or side chain. The complexes are based on the bidentate or tridentate polypyridyl complexes of ruthenium, rhenium, or rhenium, which exhibit interesting photophysical and electrochemical properties. It has been shown that the metal center has very strong perturbation to the electronic transition energy of the conjugated main chain. Optical absorption of these polymers covers the entire visible region from 400 to 900 nm. This provides new approach in the fine tuning of absorption energy of conjugated polymers for light harvesting applications. When the metal complex moieties were incorporated as pendant groups, quenching of the main chain emission was observed owing to the energy transfer from the main chain to the pendant metal complexes. The fundamental photophysical processes have been studied by ultrafast spectroscopic techniques.